Kate Thornton was the youngest ever editor of Smash Hits Magazine in 1996 at just 21.

Smash Hits used to be a hugely popular magazine but in February 2006 it was announced that it would be closed. In this Telegraph report on the end of Smash Hits, Kate Thornton commented: "I can't believe it has closed but times have changed and there is a lot more competition now."

As well as presenting The X Factor until 2007, Kate Thornton presented the ill-fated ITV show Celebrity Wrestling.

Other credits include Don't Try This At Home on ITV and Holiday on BBC, including her report from Peru, where Kate and her father Dennis explored Machu Picchu.

Many of Kate Thornton's roles have revolved around music and Sue Arnold's review of Radio 2's Music Box in The Observer says:

"Kate Thornton certainly did her homework. She reminded me of an Observer football reporter who was sent to the Midlands to do a piece about Coventry winning the FA Cup in 1987. He was away for a week, came back exhausted, threw down his notebook and said 'OK, I've interviewed every single person in Coventry, now what?'

"Thornton appeared to have interviewed everyone in the music industry ..."

In 2007, ITV announced that Kate Thornton would no longer present The X Factor, but would continue to host shows for the broadcaster.

In December 2007, Kate Thornton revealed that she and her fiance DJ and record producer Darren Emersen were expecting a baby. In May 2008 Kate Thornton gave birth to a boy called Ben.

One of Kate Thornton's first presenting roles on ITV after the announcement was Baby Ballroom, whose judges included Bonnie Langford and Ray Quinn.

In 2009, Kate Thornton told Closer that she would never talk to Simon Cowell again: "He fired me to create headlines without even telling me beforehand, when we had been good friends."

On 24 July 2009, it was announced that Kate Thornton would replace Jackie Brambles as the co-host of Loose Women, starting in September, as co-anchor with Andrea McLean.

In 2012 appeared on the Channel 5 documentary Kate Thornton – Anorexic: My Secret Past, in which she revealed that when she was 11, she developed anorexia and had it until she was 15.

In January 2016, she launched tbseen.com, a cashback site targeted specifically at women.